I have always like the aesthetic of US heavy cruisers, particularly the treaty era ones. I went digging through Spring Styles for something a bit different to what was actually made and immediately took a liking to this long, sleek, flush-decked desgin with highly raked funnels. If you take the guns off it looks like a yacht or something.
![[ img ]](https://www.shipscribe.com/styles/S-584/images/s-file/s584173.jpg)
Anyway, I have done some kitbashing before "onofficially" but I wanted to make a drawing of my own from scratch and this seemed simple enough on the one hand, but also large and pretty.
The sketch is obviously bare bones, so I added elements to flesh it out while keeping it as realistic as I could. I ended up making two versions.
For the first version, I tried to stay as close to the sheet spec as possible. The secondary armament listed on the sheet looks like nonsense, since it references a 4" AA gun that doesn't exist. However, I kept the intended batteries just swapped the calibers, so she has eight 4" low angle guns for torpedo boat defense, and four 3" AA guns. I omitted aviation facilities because they are not present in the original sketch nor mentioned on the sheet, and I was really struggling to fit them around all the armament clutter on the single deck she has.
![[ img ]](https://i.imgur.com/4wBRzMr.png)
The second version is fleshed out on the assumption the ship is built in the same timeline as USS Pensacola was historically. I added aviation facilities in the obvious place and reduced the secondary armament to the standard four 5"/25 DP guns, and added their associated height finders and directors.
![[ img ]](https://i.imgur.com/B6na0xx.png)
I hope you like these! I may do more variants, either a hypothetical WWII refit of this design, or one of the other preliminaries in the same series, and add them to this thread if/when they materialise.
I've had a few rounds of feedback on the Discord channel but I'm open to more especially seeing as this is my first full drawing
I do consider them "finished" at this point and I've been staring at them for a while, but I can be persuaded to do some further tweaks.
